Page 82 of Hellbound

Tori looked at Marian like she was a ghost. Or was about to become one.

“Lord have mercy,” Tori whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m calling 9-1-1.”

No, Marian wanted to scream. Call Vale.

Sense flew out the window as raw fear and panic mingled with the soul-crushing pain consuming her now. She didn’t need an ambulance, a hospital, or a scared-shitless traveler who should be home safe with her family. She needed Vale.

Vale swore he’d protect her. They had a deal.

“Please forgive me. I just–I don’t know what I’m dealing with anymore.” Tori stuffed the sopping wet shirt back into her little backpack, pulled out her phone, and stood up as the headlights of an incoming bus shone into the shelter.

Light enough that Marian could now see the dark ichor staining her clothes and the puddle of the same substance she’d puked up. Marian pressed the back of her hand to her lips.

It came away smeared with the same viscous black crud.

A car screeched up alongside them, the engine still rumbling as the driver’s side door opened. Marian looked up, but the world had gone out of focus again.

“I’m your Uber driver. Get in,” came a familiar masculine voice, their tone borderline jovial. Marian couldn’t place it, and she sure as fuck couldn’t see who it belonged to while blinded by headlights.

“I didn’t order an Uber,” Tori said shakily, stepping in front of Marian.

“Well, you got one now,” the voice replied.

Tori hesitated. “Wait … it’s you. What are you doing here?”

“Put the phone down.”

The voice turned hard and humorless, and very different from whatever memory Marian had of this person.

Heavy footfalls scraped the pavement, growing rapidly nearer. A body stepped into her field of vision, snuffing out the lights. Her head rolled back as she looked up into a swirling mass of black and gray.

Shouting. Shrieking. Every word was lost in a sea of noise. Arms like tree trunks slipped under her knees as they held her to a muscular body and lifted her off the pavement. She’d have fought if she could, but Marian’s body no longer functioned.

“Holy shit.” The stranger’s voice vibrated through her aching bones. “She smells like a tire fire.”

Marian’s head lolled into a hard chest covered by tight cotton shirt that smelled like exhaust and cigarettes.

I know you, shrieked a voice that pierced through a tangle of fevered thoughts.

“Hey!” Tori’s voice carried from somewhere in the distance. “What are you doing? She needs an ambulance!”

“Baby girl, we are way past that,” the male voice replied as he eased Marian into the seat of a car. The stranger’s warmth disappeared, and she immediately began shivering. Marian heard the metal click of a clip sliding into place and Tori’s strangled gasp.

Something was very, very wrong. With each passing second, her senses grew weaker as the pain grew stronger. Each thump of her heart was misery, the walls of her lungs burning with each breath.

I’m dying.

The stranger spoke with an unsettling balance of sarcasm and deadly intent.

“She’s out of time, which means we’re all out of time. So you either get in the car and help me cancel her one-way trip to Hell, or I put a bullet in your head right now, which I really don’t want to do.”

It was the last thing Marian heard before darkness swallowed her whole.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Waking hurt like dying. But Marian wasn’t just dying.

Something was tearing her soul from her body.